Arkady
President
It's interesting how the coverage of the Sony cyber attack mostly leaves out the context. It is treated as if North Korea's aggression is unprecedented. Yet, it's pretty broadly understood that the US and Israel launched a cyber attack on Iran in order to sabotage uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Imagine the shoe on the other foot for a minute. Picture that this cyber-attack hadn't merely embarrassed a movie studio. Instead, picture that it had destroyed equipment at nuclear facilities. Picture that even getting the virus on those systems had required a physical incursion by North Korea, since the networks weren't connected to the outside world. Picture how we'd react to someone putting the lives of American scientists at risk by sabotaging equipment they're using to work with radioactive elements. I'd imagine we'd treat it as an act of war.
We need to realize that when we engage in that kind of behavior, we lose the moral high ground, and we very likely encourage other countries to carry out similar attacks against us. If we treat it as fair game, in peacetime, for our government to deliberately bring down computer systems in a sovereign nation, then of course other countries will think that is fair game with regard to us, too. We have a whole lot more to lose here. We're a far more networked and computer-dependent society than Iran or North Korea. If a cyberwar free-for-all develops, it's going to hurt us a lot more than it hurts them.
Imagine the shoe on the other foot for a minute. Picture that this cyber-attack hadn't merely embarrassed a movie studio. Instead, picture that it had destroyed equipment at nuclear facilities. Picture that even getting the virus on those systems had required a physical incursion by North Korea, since the networks weren't connected to the outside world. Picture how we'd react to someone putting the lives of American scientists at risk by sabotaging equipment they're using to work with radioactive elements. I'd imagine we'd treat it as an act of war.
We need to realize that when we engage in that kind of behavior, we lose the moral high ground, and we very likely encourage other countries to carry out similar attacks against us. If we treat it as fair game, in peacetime, for our government to deliberately bring down computer systems in a sovereign nation, then of course other countries will think that is fair game with regard to us, too. We have a whole lot more to lose here. We're a far more networked and computer-dependent society than Iran or North Korea. If a cyberwar free-for-all develops, it's going to hurt us a lot more than it hurts them.
